


To My Heart I Listen

by Soozen



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bisexual Ty Lee (Avatar), Episode: s03e05 The Beach, F/F, First Dance, Fluff, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Pining, tyzula - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27861461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soozen/pseuds/Soozen
Summary: Ty Lee learned to dance while in the circus, and wants to share it with her friends.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	To My Heart I Listen

Ty Lee is thirteen the first time she ever dances.

She is a thousand miles from home, sitting on the outskirts of a campfire at the circus she’d joined only a week ago. The men and women in her company she knows by name and profession, and little else. They are warm and welcoming, but it is difficult to feel at home surrounded by strangers twice her age. All nerves she feels are squashed down, hidden away behind a cheery smile.

The musicians have brought out their instruments and are playing, and one by one, those seated around the fire stand, finding partners, and they move in the most magical way, motions to the beat, in time with their partner and Ty Lee watches in awe. Dancing is not done at home, not by anyone respectable at least. There are performances Ty Lee has seen, in honor of the Fire Lord, but this is different. This is light and it is quiet, and the expressions of the men and women are soft and happy, not harsh and serious in reverence to their most honored leader.

A boy several years older than her approaches, holding out his hand, and asks her to join him. And she accepts, because she doesn’t know what else to do, and attempts to do what she has seen, but she fumbles, bumping into others and stepping on the boy’s toes.

But he isn’t mad. He laughs, and asks her if she has ever danced before, to which she sheepishly admits that she never has. Her answer surprises him (perhaps the admission of never dancing at all, as opposed to not knowing this particular one) and he offers to teach her.

Ty Lee discovers that she _loves_ dancing. It provides an opportunity to be close to others

(and if she is honest with herself, she often has to reel herself in from being too physically affectionate; the princess is the only person she has met who had been comfortable with how regularly Ty Lee gently touched her arm or hugged her or grabbed her hand to show her something)

and to express herself, swaying to the beat, floating along and not even worrying about following the necessary steps. There aren’t rules to dancing, she discovers. Sometimes dancing has exact steps and motions and requires a partner, but it is possible to also simply be moved by the music itself.

She wishes dancing could return to the homeland, that the friends she had left behind could learn about how freeing and wonderful it is to sway and physically express oneself through dance. But things are different in the colonies for a reason, and the dances she has learned are not ones that would ever be respectful in the Fire Nation. They are Earth Kingdom in origin, and Ty Lee knows she should feel conflicted over willingly taking part in something traditional to the enemy, but she can’t, not when it is so beautiful.

There is music almost every night, and even if she is the only one, she is dancing, and it is wonderful.

And then Azula comes calling, and Ty Lee goes with her, leaving behind the circus, and leaving behind the music.

There are no instruments in Azula’s tank train, no musicians among the engineers that keep it running. When they camp, no one strums a pipa. No tsungi horn is played.

One night, while walking to her quarters, Ty Lee hums a tune and cannot help but mime the steps to the corresponding dance, missing the activity. From behind, Mai makes an off-hand remark at how strange she is; this is nothing new, nothing upsetting. Spinning around, she grins at Mai, explaining the dance, and offers to teach her.

But Mai only sighs pointedly and responds with a dull no. Ty Lee does not bring up dancing again in their travels.

However, her hips still sway on occasion when she remembers a song, and occasionally she will twirl; and sometimes, she notices Azula watching her. The princess always pretends she wasn’t, that there is suddenly something more important that requires her attention. Never does she get a chance to ask Azula to join her.

They take Ba Sing Se with incredible ease. It takes little more effort to convince Zuko to join them in returning to the Fire Nation. Ty Lee wishes for a chance to speak with Zuko, of what he saw of the Earth Kingdom, and were there any dances he had learned that he could teach her? But he and Mai are near inseparable (clearly at Azula’s doing, but they both seem happy about it). There is no opportunity.

But with the task Azula had been presented with complete, the princess has an abundance of free time. This makes her irritable; Azula has never been satisfied to have nothing to do. She thrives under activity, adversity. It is admirable, Ty Lee supposes.

One evening, Ty Lee is in Azula’s private quarters on the ship, humming to herself while practicing her gymnastics as Azula reads over an official document for her father for the umpteenth time. What she’s looking for, Ty Lee will never know, but she is happy that the princess had invited her into her room. Any private moment with her is one to be savored, she’s learned.

Even if Azula has had a scowl on her face as she scans the document.

She needs a diversion, and Ty Lee thinks she knows exactly what that could be.

Fluidly, Ty Lee brings her toes back down to the ground from the handstand she’d been in and faces her friend. “Azula?”

An exhale. “Yes, Ty Lee?” Her eyes never look up.

“Do you want to take a break?”

Now their eyes meet. Azula looks _tired_ ; not physically, but Ty Lee can see the mental strain on her. “A break?”

Ty Lee nods, stepping closer, her footsteps light on the metal floor. “Yeah, a break. You’ve been working so hard for, um—”

Hours is what she intends to say, but realizes that is so very incorrect.

“—months and you’ve done _so much_ that I think you deserve to relax for a little while.”

She tries not to squirm under Azula’s sharp gaze; she knows her so well, knows her better than perhaps anyone, she’d wager, but there are times even she isn’t certain what the princess is thinking. When she nods, Ty Lee grins.

“…There isn’t much else I can do before we arrive on the main island,” Azula says, rolling the scroll up and placing it on the desk she’s seated at. “Might as well.”

Ty Lee remains where she is as Azula stands and stretches, waiting—

“I don’t suppose you have a suggestion for what to do.”

_Yes._

“You’ve been sitting for a while, so maybe, we could do something active,” Ty Lee suggests, pushing down her excitement. “I like to—”

“Ty Lee, I am not about to do those ridiculous stretches of yours,” Azula cuts her off. “Not everyone can twist around like an eel-hound.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to say that.” It’s rather nice that, in her own way, Azula admitted to being unable to do what Ty Lee can. “On my breaks in the circus, I would sometimes dance.”

“Dance.”

“Uh-huh. One of the boys there taught me how, and It’s really fun and easy! I can teach you one of them, if you’d like.”

Again, Azula is quiet long enough that Ty Lee thinks that she might reject her offer. And again, Azula agrees.

Ty Lee starts off slow, demonstrating the patterns in with to move her feet, and guides Azula along, a hand on her shoulder, another on her hip. It goes well, she thinks, and enjoys the closeness, the physical touch, until she accidentally steps on the princess’s toes.

It’s not her fault. She’d been stepping where she is supposed to; Azula was where she was not supposed to be. But that mattered little to her. Azula snaps and calls her a clod, and that dancing is stupid, that there’s a reason no one of any worth dances in the Fire Nation.

Ty Lee doesn’t bring up dancing again.

They return to the Fire Nation, and Azula and Zuko are hailed as heroes. Ty Lee returns to her childhood home, disappearing amongst the crowd that is her sisters. She dreams of the circus and her acrobatics, and dancing at the campfire, and wonders if she’ll ever have experience that again.

Then Azula calls her to join her for a weekend getaway to Ember Island, and of course she goes. The beach is always enjoyable, though there are always a few lows

(the worst of the evening not being when she cried at the campfire, but when Azula asked for her help in flirting with _boys_ )

and highs

(the highlight was absolutely when she got to go back at trash that boy’s house)

but overall, Ty Lee considers this the best vacation she has been on by the time they return to Lo and Li’s house at the end of the night. Mai and Zuko lead the way inside, and when Ty Lee glances over her shoulder to see if Azula is behind her, only to see Azula lingering on the small deck of the house.

So Ty Lee steps back and joins her leaning against the rail, looking out at the sea and the night sky.

“This was fun,” Azula comments, and Ty Lee nods.

“I did what you suggested,” Azula continues. “When I talked to Chan. It worked. We kissed.”

Ty Lee is suddenly even happier that they she helped completely wreck Chan’s house, and wishes she had done more. “Oh? I thought maybe you hadn’t, considering what we just did….”

Azula exhales loudly through her nose. “No, we did. And then he immediately chickened out and left me.”

“He wasn’t interested in you?” That Ty Lee could believe. Many people were nervous around Azula, scared, even, and understandably so. Ty Lee considered it a privilege that the princess let her walls down around her, even if it was only slightly. “I think he’s an idiot.”

The laugh that brought from Azula was light, short, but delightful in any case. “You are certainly correct there.”

Azula says nothing more, and neither does Ty Lee. The waves crashing against each other and running up along the shore is the only sound. There is no unease, no discomfort between them, and Ty Lee wishes for it to remain this way. It is peaceful. It is just them.

She looks down when she feels another hand- Azula’s- cover her own that holds the rail; it is warm, her touch soft and firm simultaneously. Careful. That is the better word to describe it. Azula is careful in the gesture, not looking at her, but out at the horizon.

“Ty Lee, show me how to dance again.”

And Ty Lee smiles, placing her other hand over Azula’s and nods.

“Of course, Azula.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is just a cute little fic that came to me with the headcanon that Ty Lee would love to dance. 
> 
> I don't think that there would be absolutely no dancing in the Fire Nation, but that dancing would be mostly reserved for professionals, and would primarily be done to glorify the Fire Nation and Fire Lord. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it, and please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!
> 
> Follow me on tumblr @soozenwrites for writing updates and fandom nonsense!


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